


where does my help come from

by strawberry_sky



Category: Not Another D&D Podcast (Podcast)
Genre: Episode 80 spoilers, Gen, hints of Alanis/Thiala, oh don't mind me just projecting onto clerics and paladins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-03 23:13:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21187577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberry_sky/pseuds/strawberry_sky
Summary: Thiala fought her way through the Hells, and Ilsed still got exactly what he wanted, and the gods left Thiala all alone.Bev is fighting through the Hells with the exact same amulet, and there is no sign of any gods in Heresy.(spoilers for episode 80!!)





	where does my help come from

**Author's Note:**

> heads up, this one has some religious themes in it! basically naddpod was like “found family! found family! some hints of religious angst! found family!” and i was immediately like “oh, I get you, found family! heavy religious angst! ocean symbolism! parallels! projecting my own experiences onto these characters!”  
title is from "Are You Listening?" by United Pursuit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUl2aOS2kTg

In the Hells, Thiala’s amulet had burned brighter than the sun. She’d stood with squared shoulders in front of planes of fire and fiends and she’d tried to look unafraid. She’d watched Hell flee before her, before Ulfgar’s axe and Alanis’s power and her own light. 

The first few levels had been easy.

In the lower levels, all three of them had stopped trying to hide their fear. In the lower levels, they’d made deals with devils and argued with each other and lost themselves in so many ways. In the lower levels she’d clutched the amulet desperately as she _ Revivified _ Ulfgar twice and Alanis once, as she’d pulled them back from beyond the brink because they weren’t done yet, because she needed them, because the _ world _needed them. 

And they’d kept going. Someone had to kill Asmodeus, and they hadn’t asked for this but it had fallen to them anyway. It was their duty. It was _ her _ duty. And so she hadn’t faltered even as she almost lost her friends over and over again, even as she and Alanis fought over whether they were doing the right thing, even as Thiala doubted the ground beneath her feet and tried to pretend that she was as certain as she’d ever been. She’d kept going, and she’d begged Pelor, _ begged _with everything she had for a miracle. 

And then they’d failed anyway. 

It is a warm and cloudy morning, and it is two days later. In her shaking hands in the daylight of a supposedly-saved Bahumia, the amulet is just a circle of platinum, nothing more. A dirty and dusty circle, at that. Early in her journey, she’d been so good at keeping the platinum polished, making sure the sun symbol could always catch the light. 

Thiala stands on a cliff overlooking the sea and holds the amulet in her hands. She is alone. She’d told Alanis she needed some time to pray, and Alanis had squeezed her hand and told her she’d see her later. Alanis is happy, and satisfied. Alanis thinks they succeeded. So does Ulfgar. 

They’re lying to themselves. Thiala looks at the sea and remembers Ilsed taking Asmodeus’s crown, remembers the necromancer settling himself on the throne and _smiling _right at her as Alanis pulled a half-dead Ulfgar to his feet and shouted_ “We have to go, Thiala, we can’t fight this! We’ve done what we came to do, we have to go!” _

Thiala had looked at Ilsed, at his sunken, hollow eyes and his _ smile_, and she’d known that all this was going to repeat itself. And she’d reached out to Pelor and she’d asked for guidance, asked for a little more power, asked for a miracle, asked for _ something_. And she had gotten no response.

On the cliff over the sea, Thiala slips her hand into the pocket of her cloak and closes it around something hot and soft. The divine heart. Godhood in her pocket. 

She’d been the one to deal the final blow on Asmodeus, to look him in his snarling face and slide her sword through his chest. She’d taken the heart and slipped it into her pocket, and she’d told the others she’d destroyed it. She’d told herself it was a lie for Ilsed’s sake, so that he wouldn’t try to take this heart too. She told herself she’d destroy it as soon as they were out. 

But she hadn’t. She’d kept it. Just in case, right? 

Thiala looks at the amulet again, still held in her free hand. Her father had given her this amulet years ago, when she’d first left home. “Pelor has blessed you, Thiala,” he’d told her, pride shining in his eyes. “He’ll take care of you, and you’re going to do great things for him.” 

Her father, who had never been a soldier, had been killed by a lone giant seeking revenge for a war that had happened when the giant was just a child. When Thiala learned _ Resurrection _, she’d tried to bring her father back, and his soul had refused to come. Thiala had wiped away her tears and forced a smile and pretended that she understood why he would choose to leave her.

Thiala wipes away tears now, too, and she takes a deep breath and focuses on the amulet, reaching out to it with all her cleric powers. “Pelor,” she says quietly. “I’ve fought the king of the Hells. I’ve restored kingdoms. I’ve healed people and I’ve killed people, all for you. So where are you?”

Her voice breaks as she asks it, and she looks up at the sky. “Where _ are _ you? Where were you when Ilsed was lying to us and manipulating us? Where were you when hundreds of people died in a war that I helped start? Where were you when Alanis and Ulfgar and I _ failed, _ after everything? Where are you _ right now_?” 

The clouds are gray and unforgiving. The amulet is silent and dull. Hundreds of feet below, waves crash against rocks. 

And Thiala is _ furious_. Everything she's done, everything she's gone through, and her god isn't even _ here_? He won't even _ talk _ to her? Every spell she has, every power she can channel, and she can’t even get a clear fucking answer. 

She throws out her arms and yells up at the slate-gray sky. “Damn it, where _ are _ you? You’ll give me powers and magic and quests and you won’t even fucking _ talk _ to me? You could have ended all of this in a second! You could have taken Asmodeus and Ilsed at the same time, and instead you let me do your dirty work! You let me get hurt, you let me watch my friends die, and it wasn’t enough! It still wasn’t fucking _ enough_!” 

The wind is picking up, whipping Thiala’s hair around her face and ripping the last shouted word from her throat, carrying it across the sea on a plane where there are no gods. Not a single one. 

The divine heart is glowing against her thigh. She pulls it out, holds it in her hand. It’s golden, soft, about the size of her fist. It’s _ here_, in her hand. _ She _is here. 

She can make things perfect. She can fix all the hurts this place has ever felt. She can kill the devil, again. It will be hard, and it will require sacrifice. Not everyone will understand. Even Ulfgar, even Alanis--they won’t understand. 

Thiala knows this. She knows what it will cost. But it’s her duty, isn’t it? She’s the one holding the heart. Thiala doesn't half-commit to things. If Pelor won’t do it, she will, and she will do it alone.

Thiala snaps the amulet’s chain with one furious tug. She throws it into the ocean as far and as hard as she can, and then she turns and walks away and does not look back.

Beneath the waves, the amulet rests in the sand. Saltwater washes the dirt and dust away. A crab skitters past and considers picking the shiny circle up, but ultimately decides it isn’t worth the trouble. Over a matter of months, the currents bear the amulet gently across the ocean floor. 

Eventually, the waves push it up to a beach by a bay, and the freshly polished platinum catches the light, and a kobold finds it and carries it back to a pile of treasure in a half-sunken keep. 

When Beverly picks it up, it cracks in his hands with a sound like a heart breaking. By this point, Thiala has already tried to kill Alanis. By this point, the plan to kill Merrick Highhill and purge Galaderon is already in motion. 

But Beverly takes the amulet, and wears it, even when he knows why it is cracked. He carries it with him through curses and temptations and near-death experiences all the way into the sixth level of the Hells, when he is standing among burning churches staring into the fiendish face of his father. “Yes, sir,” he whispers.

His father reaches out his hand, and Bev walks forward. Because he has to, doesn’t he? This is his duty, isn’t it? Sometimes the greatest mercy is to take the monsters away, right? 

Beverly is alone, and he’s so scared, and he’s so tired. He doesn’t want to fight his father. He’s never wanted to fight his father. He can’t do this. He can’t be here, it can’t have come to this. 

Bev reaches out for something, for anything--and he finds two things. He feels the familiar warm weight of the amulet against his sternum, and he feels the slightest trace of a fungal network. When Moonshine gets under your skin, she doesn’t leave. And even in Heresy, the amulet is still solid and real and there against his chest. 

He reaches out through the amulet to Pelor. It’s a simple request, a simple plea with all his heart. _Anything but this_ _duty_. _Anything but this. _Bev reaches out to the mushrooms, and he reaches through Pelor to his friends. 

And there is an answer. The answer is Moonshine’s voice, and the answer is the strength to lift his sword.

Bev has never been truly alone.


End file.
